


Sins of Westchester

by ourgirlfriday



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Children, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Canonical Child Abuse, Character Death, Gen, Offscreen Violence, halloween fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 02:11:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourgirlfriday/pseuds/ourgirlfriday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles Xavier was a normal little boy, on the far outskirts of a normal little town, who lived in a house covered with blood and skin and sinew</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sins of Westchester

**Author's Note:**

> This is very heavily influenced by Emily Carroll's [Out of Skin](http://www.emcarroll.com/comics/skin/). Everyone should read it because she's great.
> 
> Big thanks to Lou and Fay for looking this over. All mistakes are my own.

Charles Xavier was a normal little boy, on the far outskirts of a normal little town, who lived in a house covered with blood and skin and sinew. Nobody could see it, except him, but it was there all the same. He remembered a time when the house was normal, too -- long ago when his father was still alive and his mother smiled and they’d tuck him in together, and things were good. 

But then father died, and Kurt came, and with him Cain. His mother never smiled, now; not even when Charles tucked her in and kissed her cheek like she had done for him so long ago when Westchester was warm and full of love.

Nobody smiled in Westchester these days. 

He first noticed the blood pooling in out of the way corners after the first girl disappeared. But no one saw it, no matter who he told or how wild he became. Kurt had slapped him then, and called him a foolish boy and a liar but Charles couldn’t pretend not to see the panic in his eyes or the furtive glances between his stepfather and stepbrother. 

That night was the first night he saw the shadow. It would flicker at the edge of his vision, and would disappear when he turned his head. That night, though, he saw it clearly. It stood silently in his room as he lay in bed, unmoving. Although he didn’t remember falling asleep, it was gone in the morning. 

He wasn’t allowed into town after that night. Kurt and mother said it was because things were dangerous, with a maniac on the loose -- it was safer to stay in Westchester (amidst the growing puddles of blood and walls patched with cold, grey skin that they couldn’t see). As the days passed, the skin grew to cover the hallways in their entirety like the spiderwebs in the attic. When he lay in bed at night, voices whispered words of caution into his ears, warning him against angering Kurt and Cain, and urging him to trust the shadow that had taken to standing guard over his bed. Sometimes they begged for revenge, but Charles hid his head under a pillow, then, until the shadow crept close and the voices faded. 

Even though he couldn’t leave the house, the servants brought in news from town – three, four, five girls missing now, the last one barely twelve. Only a year older than Master Charles himself. They trod through the blood, tracking it about the place, walking through webs of viscera and hair and never knowing what they carried about them. They gossiped about Master Charles’s health, when they thought he wasn’t listening. How thin he’s grown, they would say. How dull his eyes. 

How strange that he should fair so ill, when Masters Kurt and Cain are so hale and hearty. 

As fall became winter, Westchester became cocooned in snow and silence and cracked and dusty skin. Everyone was forced indoors now, invading Charles’s usual haunts and locking him in his room. He hid in his bed, tucked under thick blankets with the voices of the dead girls telling him stories of faraway places where nothing hurt and a lost boy looking for a friend. They knit him sweaters with needles made from their bones, and tended to him when a fever came and Kurt refused entry to Charles’s room to the few servants able to brave the weather. He wished desperately to know their names, but they themselves couldn’t remember. And he saw the shadow less and less, and wept for its loss. 

One night he woke to see a boy near his age standing at the foot of his bed. For the first time in what seemed like forever, his room was empty of the girls’ remains. 

“Who are you?” Charles asked without fear.

“My name is Erik. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” he answered as he held out his hand. “We’ve got a long road ahead. We need to hurry now, the girls are waiting for us.” 

“Where are we going?”

Erik looked out the window. “I don’t know, really. But we won’t be alone anymore. I guess we’ll find out together.” 

“Are you dead?” Charles didn’t mean to ask. He didn’t know where the idea came from but it wouldn’t leave his head. “Are you the shadow man?”

Erik smiled at him kindly as Charles reached out and let the other boy pull him out of bed. 

“I suppose I am. The last thing I remember is hurting, and now I don’t hurt anymore. It’ll be okay, Charles. It’s time to go.”

Charles looked back, unsurprised to see his own frail body still in the bed. He followed Erik through bone strewn hallways and out the door. As they passed the threshold, he heard the wailing of the girls behind him as they flexed their muscles and gnashed their teeth. Erik’s grip on his hand tightened when the first screams of his family left inside hit their ears. They were nearly to town before the first people ran up the hill towards what remained of Westchester, but the boys didn’t dawdle. 

The girls had taken care of everything, after all. They had no reason to stay.


End file.
